A re­port just pub­lished in the UK high­lights some of the ad­di­tion­al chal­lenges faced by dis­abled en­tre­pre­neurs there.

The Lilac Re­view, a gov­ern­ment-backed re­port pro­duced by the An­glia Ruskin Uni­ver­si­ty and Small Busi­ness Britain, con­clud­ed that, de­spite the fact that dis­abled en­tre­pre­neurs make up 25 per cent of the coun­try’s small busi­ness­es, they face con­sid­er­able ad­di­tion­al is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly in re­la­tion to ac­cess to fund­ing.

The find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­view are, as ex­pect­ed in this type of re­port, very spe­cif­ic about British so­ci­ety and their re­al­i­ty, but it is still worth a look at the out­comes, as some of them will no doubt res­onate here.

First, a bit of re­gion­al con­text.

A pol­i­cy pa­per on dis­abil­i­ty pub­lished by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment in 2018 states that the coun­try is fac­ing a rise in the num­ber of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ty, in part linked to an age­ing pop­u­la­tion and an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple with chron­ic dis­eases.

And pop­u­la­tion da­ta for the re­gion shows that about 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple in the Caribbean live with some kind of dis­abil­i­ty; clos­er to home, and ac­cord­ing to the 2011 Cen­sus, T&T has just over 50,000 peo­ple liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ty or around 4 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

It is not clear how many of those with dis­abil­i­ty in T&T own and run small busi­ness­es, but it won’t be sur­pris­ing if the num­ber is rel­a­tive­ly high as en­tre­pre­neur­ship may be a route to gen­er­ate in­come for those who may find it hard­er to get a job.

But even if the num­bers are small, that in it­self could be a rea­son for con­cern, as that may sug­gest the bar­ri­ers in T&T make it even hard­er for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ty to start or grow a busi­ness.

And here is where the Lilac Re­view’s find­ings can be help­ful.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, 57 per cent of those sur­veyed cit­ed fi­nan­cial sup­port as their most crit­i­cal is­sue for the year ahead, fol­lowed by the costs of man­ag­ing a dis­abil­i­ty, the risk of drop in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with in­creased health is­sues as they age, and the loss of state ben­e­fits (more on this lat­er).

There is ev­i­dence that, at least in the UK, dis­abled en­tre­pre­neurs are 400 times less like­ly to ac­cess in­vest­ment when com­pared with non-dis­abled peers, some­times be­ing put in a less ad­van­ta­geous po­si­tion due to rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple things like ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is­sues dur­ing the process of pitch­ing for con­tracts or ap­pli­ca­tion for­mats that have no flex­i­bil­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date their re­quire­ments.

On top of that, the re­searchers found a deep­en­ing lev­el of con­cern by small busi­ness own­ers with dis­abil­i­ty that the push­back against Di­ver­si­ty, Eq­ui­ty and In­clu­sion ini­tia­tives kicked off by the cur­rent Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the US may spill over to oth­er coun­tries, with a di­rect im­pact on them and their busi­ness­es.

Even if we dis­count the very dif­fer­ent so­cial and eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties here and in Britain, these find­ings shouldn’t feel too for­eign in our shores, in­clud­ing the point about dis­abil­i­ty ben­e­fits.

Al­though such ben­e­fits are a much big­ger po­lit­i­cal is­sue in the UK at the mo­ment, due to the bal­loon­ing cost of dis­abil­i­ty al­lowances, what the re­port high­lights is some­thing that can al­so ap­ply here: what econ­o­mists call the pover­ty trap.

That’s when the risk of los­ing state ben­e­fits (ir­re­spec­tive of how small they might be) due to gen­er­a­tion of some in­come, push­es in­di­vid­u­als to­wards stay­ing out of em­ploy­ment or run­ning a busi­ness as it makes more fi­nan­cial sense to stay un­em­ployed.

The way to avoid that is to have a ta­pered ben­e­fit sys­tem that goes down as the per­son’s in­come grows, and not in just one go.

But, more to the point, why should we wor­ry about dis­abled en­tre­pre­neurs?

First, be­cause an in­clu­sive so­ci­ety that wants all cit­i­zens to be pro­duc­tive and ac­tive­ly en­gaged with life in the coun­try must look at how it can adapt to tru­ly give a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty for all.

But al­so be­cause this makes fi­nan­cial sense.

Es­pe­cial­ly when we take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion our age­ing pop­u­la­tion and a work par­tic­i­pa­tion rate that is head­ing south, we need to have as many as pos­si­ble peo­ple con­tribut­ing to the coun­try’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth and gen­er­at­ing wealth for them­selves and their em­ploy­ees.

And be­cause, in our quest for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, every con­tri­bu­tion, from every seg­ment of so­ci­ety, counts. And a lot.

In oth­er words, it would be sim­ply un­ac­cept­able to over­look the po­ten­tial pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains and wealth cre­ation in T&T through the en­ter­pris­ing skills of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ty.

As said by Vic­to­ria Jenk­ins, the co-chair of the re­view and founder of Un­hid­den, a suc­cess­ful fash­ion la­bel for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ty, ‘dis­abled en­tre­pre­neurs are in­no­v­a­tive, im­pact­ful and grow­ing. Yet we re­main un­der-rep­re­sent­ed, un­der­fund­ed and un­der­es­ti­mat­ed’. In­deed.

Per­haps prov­ing her point, it is a pity that, in the pol­i­cy doc­u­ment on dis­abil­i­ty pub­lished by the T&T Gov­ern­ment in 2018, there was bare­ly a men­tion about dis­abled en­tre­pre­neurs, al­though at least it did fo­cus on em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

But this shouldn’t be an ei­ther-or sit­u­a­tion.

There is no doubt that we need clear and ac­tive poli­cies to boost em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for those with dis­abil­i­ties.

The need for the same ap­proach when deal­ing with dis­abled en­tre­pre­neurs should be equal­ly ob­vi­ous.